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I am Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. I am also the editor of the academic journal The Latin Americanist.

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Hugo Chávez got the Enabling Law he wanted, which allows broad decree power for 18 months, and thereby reduced horizontal accountability in Venezuela even further. He even claims that initially he only wanted 12 months, but the people affected by the floods wanted more. Of course, this law is only intended to help those affected by the rain, and so are limited to...well, actually there is basically no limit. Here are the nine areas where Chávez will have the power to ignore the new legislature. Altogether they comprise everything, the world we live in, and life in general:

With Chavez able to make laws without opposition approval, opposition plans to put a check on the president's powers now lie in tatters.

The move comes as polls show support for the former paratrooper slipping, and critics have expressed fears that he could use the new powers to marginalise opposition parties ahead of the election.

Lucia Newman, Al Jazeera's Latin America editor, said that the timing of the decision was telling.

"The justification for being able to rule by decree is that it will allow the president to quickly pass new laws to deal with the emergency that the country is facing because of weeks of floods," she said. "But clearly the timing here is very suspect. In three weeks he will no longer have a two-thirds majority, and now he will be able to pass by decree laws dealing with just about everything."